Great story with a happy ending. Good for you and your family. Fortunately common sense won out and you got the .410 which is a great gun for your intended purpose. Enjoy.
Got all the reloading components and tried out the reloader. Works pretty slick. My son really likes doing the reloading. After he popped out a shell he'd say "we just saved 35 cents dad!"
We went out to the range to try out our reloads and they worked just fine. So I guess that's the end of our story. Thanks again for all the input.
Dunno if this will be of any use to you but I started my son on clays with an old folding single barrel .410 poachers gun when he was 6 years old, by the time he was 7 he was taking 60% of the clays out of the air with it, the only thing it lacked was the ability to hit clays from the high towers. When I asked his instructor shouldn't I be putting him on a 20G or 16G he laughingly told me to keep him on a .410 as if he had a gun with more shot and spread he would start to make me look like a novice. We put him on a 20G and he made me look like I couldn't shoot
He's 12 now and very, very good with 20G, time to get him onto a 12G I feel.
Great for you Gdawgs- As i stated earlier in a post. When he gets good with the 410--and he gets a 20.You better do one of two things. Give him bad reloads or bump him before he shoots,Or get used to hangiing the head low
Glad to hear you guys do it all together.
Well we've had this shotgun for about a month now. We go out shooting every weekend(sometimes twice/wkend). He has over 250 rounds through it already. I bought a box of the rolling rabbit clays, and I roll those on the ground while he blasts them. He's getting pretty good at those. We haven't tried fliers yet.
Yesterday we went squirrel hunting and he bagged his first animal! We took it home, cleaned it and made stew in the crock pot. It was actually pretty good. I've never had squirrel before. When we were cleaning it, he said "Where's the heart? You can eat that." I think he got that from a survival show that he watches. We put that in the pot too and he ate it.
We've had a great time with this gun. It has worked flawlessly and we've done a lot of bonding this last month. Thanks again!
You are THE MAN! Teaching the kid how to shoot, hunt, cook, reload, the value of thrift (35 centsx250 ...at this rate you will save the purchase price of the gun in no time!)...... Kudos to you, Sir!
I wouldn't hand him a shotgun yet not to say he can't handle it or nothing. Its just better to wait till he is about 13 and hand him that 20 ga. like you learned! At 9 years old a .25 acp is his best bet. Have fun because I know he is impatient my son is too about this stuff! They growing up too fast.
In todays world I think you need to capture your sons interest while he is interested. Good for you for getting him started early and I hope he's a shooter for life.
It's important to note that you save a whole bunch more $$$$ in 28 and .410 when you reload.
12 and 20 gauge are a commodity and priced that way. The small gauges are much higher priced, they also take less lead and powder per round.
Savings are substantial, comparatively. And the time spent with the kid............priceless.
I'm not quite understanding the 25 ACP comment either. For hunting squirrel or other small game, the 410 or the .22 work great. If he wants to shoot something with a little more oomph at the range, I let him shoot some of my revolvers, 38 spec(Dan Wesson 357) or 44 Spec.(Ruger Super Blackhawk 44 Mag) I make some wimpy rounds using Trail Boss powder, so they are easy shooting. But still way more power than a 25 auto.
As far as saving money reloading. We should be well over halfway to paying for the MEC reloader I bought.
Despite the naysayers I think you'll be happy with that 410. Mine was a single shot I got for Christmas when I was about 12 yrs old. More years later than I'll admit to I still have it and all the fond memory's that go with it. It put a boatload of rabbit and bird on the table.
You might want to reconsider selling it. I've had mine for a longggg time and wouldn't give it up for anything even though it hasn't been fired in decades....
My first gun was an H&R 410 that I got when I was 7. I shot it every weekend, at game during hunting season and blackbirds and whatever else I could find off-season. I think a 410, especially in single shot, teaches you to make your shot count and where to put that shot. When I was 10 I got a .20 ga. 1100. Didn't like it and went back to a 410 870. Still use a 410 Rem 11-48 for doves ( I'm 40).
I started out with an H&R topper Jr. 20 gauge at age 11. I wasn't a big kid. I still have it and still use it now and then. My daughters all used it. In a couple more years, my grandsons will be using it. We all did well without a 410. Not knocking the use of a .410 though. That's what my dad often used when we went squirrel and rabbit hunting.
I was watching an episode of Sons of guns and some big shot bow hunter came in and ordered a custom made something or other. It ended up being a 410 shotgun that shot arrows. I was laughing because they thought they'd created something new and hi tech. When we were kids many moons ago, we always shot aluminum arrows from our 410's. Never could extract one from a tree.